Author: Cristian Farias

THE HUFFINGTON POST The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to allow the Trump administration the chance to submit a new round of court filings supporting the president’s travel ban on six Muslim-majority nations, one day after a new ruling declared the restrictions are incompatible with federal law. The high court was already weighing whether to grant an emergency appeal over a sweeping May ruling in a Maryland case that concluded President Donald Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional for singling out Muslims. But on Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit went in a more modest direction, and...

THE HUFFINGTON POST In court challenges across the country, the Department of Justice has maintained that the executive order is “facially legitimate” and was issued in good faith. It has also denied that it was meant to target members of a religious group. Instead, the administration has argued the travel ban is a lawful exercise of the president’s authority, given to him by Congress, to exclude noncitizens from the country. This is a developing story and will be...

THE HUFFINGTON POST In the thick of his argument defending President Donald Trump’s travel ban earlier this week, a top lawyer for the Department of Justice was thrown a curveball from a dark period in American history. Richard Paez, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, asked Jeffrey Wall, the acting solicitor general, if the government’s case for the executive order banning travelers from six Muslim-majority countries resembled the legal justifications for the displacement and incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Without addressing the question head-on, Wall rejected the comparison. “This case is not...

THE HUFFINGTON POST WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump broke with longstanding White House protocol when he reportedly asked former FBI Director James Comey to go easy in his investigation of Michael Flynn, according to lawyers who served as attorney general and chief White House adviser under prior administrations. Asked at a Wednesday conference if he could hypothetically conceive of a similar conversation between former President George W. Bush and a top law enforcement official about an ongoing criminal investigation, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was emphatic. “One-word answer: No,” Mukasey said. Neil Eggleston, former President Barack Obama’s White House...

THE HUFFINGTON POST Justice Neil Gorsuch made a difference Thursday in his first 5-4 vote on the Supreme Court, siding with his fellow conservatives to deny a petition from eight Arkansas inmates who sought to stop back-to-back-to-back executions. Gorsuch’s vote on one of several 11th-hour petitions, in effect, allowed the state of Arkansas to carry out its first execution in nearly 12 years. Ledell Lee was killed just before midnight Thursday, despite his legal team’s herculean effort to persuade the high court to put off his execution so that he could pursue a potential innocence claim and demonstrate that he was intellectually disabled. Lee...

There’s every indication that President Donald Trump and the courts are headed for a constitutional showdown, and only one of them can emerge the victor. The Trump administration late Saturday urged an appeals court to immediately put on hold a judge’s nationwide order that effectively stopped, albeit temporarily, Trump’s de facto travel ban on all refugees and on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The federal government has begun complying with the order. And as expected, the president has taken to personally attacking the judge, U.S. District Judge James Robart, whom he smeared in a series of Twitter posts that say more about Trump’s apparent disregard for the constitutional order of things than anything else. But lawyers for the administration are making a more nuanced case in legal filings and at oral arguments in the several courts hearing cases over his executive order ― including in an emergency request seeking to block the ruling Robart issued on Friday. The administration’s argument, if accepted by the courts, is one that could give Trump nearly unfettered power to go even beyond his initial executive order. The gist of it: Courts should stay out of this altogether, or else national security will be at risk. In their emergency motion, Department of Justice lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that Robart’s ruling “contravenes the considered judgment of Congress...

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will hold oral arguments in a closely watched transgender rights case on March 28. Justice-nominee Neil Gorsuch likely won’t be there to hear them. That’s probably good news for Virginia teen Gavin Grimm, the transgender student at the heart of the case. Gorsuch could be confirmed to the Supreme Court before the Senate’s Easter recess in mid-April, but even that’s an optimistic estimate from Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Democrats have indicated they’ll make it hard for Republicans to move him through the Senate that quickly. One thing we know about Gorsuch is that he thinks courts are too hesitant to second-guess the judgment of federal agencies. That means he would be a likely vote in favor of school authorities in the case of Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. It gets a bit tricky here. The case, broadly speaking, is about transgender rights. But the specific issue before the Supreme Court is about how much deference courts should give to federal agencies’ interpretation of their own regulations. The Gloucester County School Board is challenging the Education Department’s guidance on how public schools should accommodate transgender students’ choice of bathroom, which the department based on Title IX, a law that prohibits sex discrimination by schools that receive federal funding. Title IX does not mention gender identity explicitly. But the Obama Education Department determined that the definition of sex under Title...

In a move that should surprise no one, President Donald Trump is reportedly bringing the two reported finalists for Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat to Washington to create a sense of intrigue ahead of Tuesday’s primetime reveal. Or “to build suspense,” as CNN’s Pamela Brown put it in her report on Tuesday. “This is all an extraordinary measure … to keep the selection private ahead of tonight’s announcement,” Brown said of what increasingly looks like a piece of political theater. Finalists Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman ― both of whom are highly respected in conservative circles ― are either in Washington or en route for the 8 p.m. announcement, according to CNN. Trump has already said he’s made his choice. So is the purpose of this arrangement to give the president one last sit-down with the nominee just to make sure? Under normal circumstances, a president’s choice for the Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy. The chief executive meets with the candidates in the days leading up to the nomination and may not make a decision until moments before the announcement. But there’s no precedent for this kind of spectacle, and no apparent reason for bringing both candidates to town for the announcement. Some observers have compared the former “Apprentice” star’s theatrics to another popular reality show: Tonight! #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/dNsOBWLuwA — Supreme Court Places (@SCOTUSPlaces) January 31, 2017 The next...